


Incense and Peppermints

by Trystero



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bitterness, F/M, Gen, M/M, Regret, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8160395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trystero/pseuds/Trystero
Summary: A collection of tiny snippets, mostly featuring confused relationships.





	1. Aunty Lily’s Advice Column

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marcus_Aurelius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_Aurelius/gifts).



> Thanks for the support :)
> 
> Note - Most of these snippets have no proper ending. Anyone who wants to continue/finish them, be my guest!

**Dear Aunty Lily,  
I have recently suffered the misfortune of falling in lust with a profligate. How can I crush my feelings and become pure again? **   
**_~~Vul~~ Vexed._ **

Dear Vexed,  
Though inappropriate feelings can and sometimes should be put down, it sounds as though the only thing wrong with this relationship, in your eyes, is the profligacy of your paramour. But we none of us are pure, Vexed. All of us have flaws, and if the object of your dreams is a profligate, well perhaps that is theirs. Perhaps if you could overlook that flaw, he/she would be willing in turn to overlook yours. Just a thought.  
Love, Aunty Lily.

* * *

**Dear Aunty Lily,  
My colleague has recently begun a relationship with a profligate. He is away a lot, but in my role I have to stay near my boss, who doesn’t go to town. I miss him terribly. I thought he liked me. Now I don’t know what to do. How can I get him away from the harlot? **   
**_~~Luc~~ Lonely._ **

Dear Lonely,  
I always say, never start a relationship with someone you couldn’t get away from if you needed to. Thus, affairs with workmates, housemates and other people in close proximity are usually unwise. Begrudging your colleague his happiness will not make you feel any better. It sounds like you need some time off. Perhaps ask your boss if you could go to town, and there see if you can meet someone new. I recommend The Tops. Best of luck!  
Love, Aunty Lily

* * *


	2. Even when I sleep.

Craig Boone never did well on IQ tests as a boy, not because he wasn’t a thinker, but because he didn’t give a damn. He didn’t see the point in excelling at anything that would leave him in a room, when he could be outside. His mind was never truly at ease, and the only thing that made him feel close to tranquillity was being able to see the horizon. 

His ability to scan and memorise his environment so he noticed the slightest motion or change, combined with his propensity to be motionless and silent for extraordinary lengths of time was how he became the single best sniper 1st Recon had ever had the good fortune to recruit. 

Boone could focus like a human telescope. He could zoom in on a disruption in his field of vision and see it as though it was magnified. The problem was that that ability also went to the internal and he could not stop himself focussing on disturbing thoughts and memories. 

After too many disturbing memories came to live with him, sleep itself became a memory.

One day a scarred traveller wearing spiked knuckles engraved Love and Hate passed through his little town, did him a kindness and invited him to come along on the road. Destination, the horizon. Boone didn’t even stop to pack. 

‘Love and Hate’ turned out to be the perfect companion for Boone. Spoke softly and rarely. Drank whiskey, but not too much. Fought fiercely for both of their lives but never seemed to think anything of it. Mainly just let him be. 

They travelled here and there, making a fair number of friends and a few enemies along the way. There would have been a lot more enemies but they tended to metamorphose into corpses.


	3. Confetti

“What kind of bitch from hell sells a pregnant woman into slavery?” Boone whispered, staring at the slip of paper Kimiko had given him. The receipt; excavated from a safe hidden under said hellbitch’s office floorboards.

Kimiko’s voice was less quiet, but just as bitter. “That special kind of person, the kind that seems all nice and friendly while they ply you with arsenic tea. The kind that denounces their neighbours to the Stasi. Superficially different to the kind that takes you out for a drink and compliments your hair then shoots you in the head and buries you alive, but the end result is the same.”

Boone slowly tore the receipt in half, then eight small squares, then tiny shreds. He kept at it until no piece could be torn any smaller, then threw the confetti at Kimiko in an angry gesture. It floated down over her like snow. “Sorry,” he said, looking away.

Kimiko blew a piece off her lip. “Come with me.”

He turned further away, so she couldn’t see his face.

“Let’s get out of here, and go get some sweet, bloody revenge on the world.” Kimiko kissed the barrel of her .223 pistol, and raised her eyebrows at the back of Boone’s head.

He didn’t respond. He seemed to have turned to stone. After a while she left.  
“I’ll shoot some redshirts for you,” she called up to the Boone-shaped statue framed in Dinky’s jaws, by way of goodbye. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the horizon.


	4. B.B. (Bullet through the brain)

My friends all fight with each other, all the time. I try to play peacekeeper, but I get bored easily, so I’m not much good at it. Mostly when wars of words - or worse - break out in the Lucky 38 I just go get a frag grenade and pull the pin. The place clears in seconds.

It always works, because they believe I might really do it. And I might. Sometimes I have to force myself to put the pin back in.

I walk a blurry line between life and death, never quite sure which side of the line I would rather be on. When Benny shot me, you know how it happened? I let him. I could have taken him out first - he’s not that good and the Khan goons he hired were drugged-out nitwits - but I didn’t. I just watched the action play out like it was a stageplay I had no emotional investment in and I didn’t really care what happened next.

Sorry, I ramble a bit. A bullet through the brain will do that; thoughts take a much more circuitous route through my mind than they used to. To get back to what I was saying, the only ones who get along are Boone and Rex; those two have no trouble with each other. They have a lot in common, after all.

Ha, no, I don’t mean the smell. We all stink, there’s not enough water to have the luxury of washing clothes very often. We’re all of us abandoned, and all secretly, desperately want love, preferably without having to give any. Well, almost all, Lily’s the honourable exception there.

No, I just mean Boone and Rex both have a history of being hopelessly loyal to uncaring masters. Ok, yes they’re both kind of dopey too. You said it, not me. And both have Legion graffiti carved into them. CAESAR’S LEGION WAS HERE, crude drawing of cock and balls. Figuratively speaking in Boone’s case, literally in Rex’s. They ran out of room on Rex’s flank when drawing the cock so the balls are disproportionately large. Someone has subsequently painted bloodshot eyes in them so now it’s a very strange-looking piece of art.

Poor Boone, his stains drive him mad, but they won’t ever wash off. The best he can hope is that they will slowly fade.

As far as uncaring masters go, some might say I’m one of them, but I’m fond of Boone and Rex really. It’s impossible not to be, they’re both sweet guys at heart. I just try not to show it.

Anyway, to keep the rest of my friends from putting holes in each other, I only take one with me on each trip.

I suppose I should introduce myself. Ms B. Brynjólfsdottir, at your service. I don’t know what the first B stands for, it’s just what was engraved into the back of my PipBoy when I was carried into the doctor’s surgery. Maybe the PipBoy wasn’t mine and it’s not even my name; I don’t know.

No one except Arcade can pronounce Brynjólfsdottir. Cass said that names that don’t rhyme with anything should be illegal. That comment lead to the group calling each other Ass, Loon, Barmaid, Foul, Silly and Hex for a while; Veronica was variously Electronica, Moronica, Supersonica, and Santa Monica. They gave up and named me B.B.

It’s funny, I remember some stuff perfectly well. I actually remember the night I was shot. Afterwards, when I recovered, I found I know how things work, but the names of them are a problem. For example, I can strip, clean and accurately fire pretty much any gun, and they feel familiar in my hands, but I don’t remember the make or model of any of them. Similarly, I instinctively know my way around, but I have trouble recalling the names of any settlements, let alone the people in them. People say Hi Courier to me like we’re old friends, and I don’t know who they are.

I guess Benny shot all the names out of my head.


	5. Let’s Fly, Let’s Fly Away.

Boone is so angry with me. Not sure I’ve ever seen him this angry before. He won’t speak to me, and every now and then when I look back I catch him staring at me with the same cold, assessing eyes he gets when he’s lining up a shot. He’s walking 30 yards behind me, and his lips are moving, I think he’s describing me to himself under his breath. “Traitorous bitch”, probably.

The sort of curses a guy can’t be blamed for muttering when a good friend of his kisses his worst enemy.

In my limited defence, there was a small amount of alcohol involved. But not much. One shot of absinthe. It’s strong stuff, but one shot is not enough to explain being caught kissing a Legionary. And not just any Legionary. The one. The one you are thinking of, and hoping it isn’t. The one who does all the nastiest shit, and you are sick to death of. Yeah, that one.

“Pfft, seriously? Him? How can you be so goddamned stupid?” I hear you sighing. Well, let me explain – No? You refuse to let me explain? You “don’t want to hear any bullshit”? Funny, Boone said the exact same thing. Ok, have it your way. I’ll just tell the story from this point on.

It’s 7:43 antemeridian and already uncomfortably hot. It’ll be another blistering day. Boone and me are walking along the road up towards the old REPCONN Test Site. I got asked by people in the nearby town of NoVac to clear it out ages ago, something about a plague of feral ghouls and nightkins emanating from there, and I said I would but never got round to it until now. I’ve been hellish busy. You wouldn’t believe how many people beg me to do favours for them. Or maybe you would. And of course, half the time the “little favours” put me into a life-or-death situation. Scrub that, more like 90% of the time.

Anyway, we’re heading up there with enough ammo in our backpacks to exterminate everything that moves, breathes, or so much as wiggles its little finger. I’m using my AER14 prototype laser rifle, fitted with focus optics and a beam splitter. It’s scarily powerful and accurate, I can one-shot pretty much anything with it.

If either side was armed with these things the war would be over. But the Legion runs around with rusty machetes, only winning by virtue of the incredible recklessness of their attacks combined with their compulsory recruitment policy. The NCR, though better armed, are losing more people that they’re recruiting, and their strategists are impossibly bogged down by bureaucracy.

It’s a war of attrition, and I don’t mind watching them both lose. No one sane wants the Legion to prevail, but the NCR are full of shit too. They’ve got no business trying to control things here in the Mojave, or anywhere outside California. I told Boone that once. My black eye’s better, but the topic is off limits, at least for the foreseeable future. He loves the NCR like a battered child loves its father.

Boone is carrying his Gobi Campaign sniper rifle, fitted with a suppressor. Which I might add, I got for him, though he just grunted “Alright” on being ceremonially presented with it. Like I was giving him a slightly burnt toasted sandwich. I think he secretly likes it though; he hasn’t used another gun since. He doesn’t even need one shot per nasty, he can and often does line up his shots so he takes out two or more with a single shot. He’s that good. Together, I’m not expecting any problems up at the REPCONN Facility. Unless he shoots me in the back.

Hopefully a good bit of monster-vaporising should put Boone into a slightly better mood.

Who am I? Oh, you’ve forgiven me for the poorly-thought-out choice of smooch-recipient I mentioned earlier? Maybe? Ok, I’ll take a maybe. I’m Dorcas Kabuye, master this-and-thatter, habitué of the Lucky 38, friend of everyone and no one. Oh ha ha, “Dork”, never heard that before. It’s a real name, fool. Ask someone educated.

My friend Cass nicknamed me Cazador for short, although it’s longer, on account of my “poisonous nature” as she kindly put it, but that backfired on her because everyone took to calling me Caz and now neither of us can tell who’s being called when we hear someone shout “CAAASZ!” 

But Cass isn’t on this mission, so you can safely call me Caz.

I’m a little on edge. There’s a lot going on, but you wouldn’t let me explain, remember? So just take my word for it, I’m stressed for a reason. Lots of reasons, actually, and only one of them wears a fedora or a dogpelt on his head depending on the locale and kisses like Aphrodite reborn as man.

Yeah, I know you don’t want to hear about him. I’ll shut up. But oh man, the dude can kiss... ok ok. No, it won’t happen again.

I check back on Boone. He moves so silently I intermittently panic that he’s vanished, but he’s still there, giving me the stink-eye. I hope we can patch things up. I need him, and he needs me. Without me, he’d have blown his brains out in a motel room in NoVac by now. No exaggeration. When I met him he was at tipping point. Without him... well, apart from the vaporising taking a lot longer, I’m not sure I’d have the heart to do all this trekking around. I’d probably have drunk myself to death in the cocktail lounge of the Lucky 38.

We’re both miserable sods, but for some reason we’re much less miserable when we’re together. Almost cheerful, some of the time. Have you ever been really down, and listened to some sad music, and it cheers you up? That’s how it works for us. We’re each other’s sad and beautiful pick-me-up.

So I don’t want Boone mad with me, and I wish I could make it up to him.

And I’m sorry I came across like an asshole to you, before. I’m messing up all over the place right now.


	6. Stars Live in the Evenings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Inspired by the song _Pretty Baby_ by Blondie).

Vulpes Inculta is one of those men who sleeps facing away from you, and in the morning gets up and walks away without a word. His presence is one of silence; he doesn’t snore or talk in his sleep, he barely says anything while awake. He moves across the room soundlessly, as though he doesn’t quite touch the floorboards. That doesn’t mean his presence is unnoticeable – quite the opposite. It’s intense. When he is in a room everything serves just to highlight him. It’s not a peaceful silence, nor is it oppressive exactly. It’s breathtaking.

His only concession to observing my existence is one glance as he straightens up to leave, boots laced and hat on. He pauses as if considering words and I wait, but he turns, and the door closes behind him.

I lie back on the ancient pillows, feeling an uneasy blend of physical satiety and deep emotional dissatisfaction. That’s the way it is, when you love a man who does not love you but is willing, all the same, to dally with you.

I first met him in Nipton, we didn’t say much, but I went away feeling like I had met him before. A month or two later I encountered him again, this time in New Vegas, where he gave me Caesar’s Mark and an invitation to the Fort. I instantly recognised him, even though his head and eyes had been obscured at Nipton. His intonation is odd and distinctive, but it was more than that. I knew him, somehow. I knew his walk, his smell, his subtle gestures. Nonetheless he introduced himself to me as though we were strangers, and I suppose we must have been. Now and again I come across people who knew me from before I got shot in the head, people that I have to reacquaint myself with, but I couldn’t have known him. He is Legion.

My friend Craig despises the Legion and anyone who has anything to do with them. He has his reasons and I can’t argue with them. Craig walked out two days ago, after seeing Vulpes emerge from my bedroom the first time. I suppose it was lucky that a gunfight didn’t break out. Instead he just left quietly, which made me feel worse. It didn’t help that, just the previous night, Craig had finally opened up about the tragedy that befell his wife and child. He said he’d never told anyone before, and he cried, and I hugged him till dawn. That night we felt really close. Then the next afternoon I had to meet a contact in the underground bar at Vault 21, and after the contact had left and I was finishing my drink and about to leave too, I saw Vulpes leaning against the bar, looking sideways at me.

He turned his head to look fully at me, and I walked over to him like I had no power not to, like he had mind control. As I reached him he touched my shoulder. Every tiny hair on my body stood on end. The look he was giving me... _proprietary_ is the only way I can describe it. Normally I’d say it’s a pretty big turn-off if a guy acts like he owns me. But it wasn’t this time. If I’d had a white flag I would have been waving it like mad.

Well, one thing led to another and now I have lost a friend who cared a lot about me, and gained a lover who I am almost sure cares nothing for me at all. He takes pains to let me know how little he cares. Like the wordless walkouts. Each evening when he has come back to me, three times now, I have been surprised. Each morning I get the strong impression I should not expect to see him again, and I lie in bed feeling melancholy for a little while, before getting on with the days’ tasks.

In between, while the stars are out, and he is mine? Ohhh... Take it from me, the man knows how to kiss. His touch, like everything else about him, is so familiar to me. He knows exactly what I like. It’s uncanny.

That first morning, when I woke up next to his warm body, I felt shock as much as pleasure. Somehow I didn’t picture him as needing sleep as mortals do. When he’s awake he seems ethereal, as though he doesn’t have earthly needs. He doesn’t smoke, I’m yet to see him eat, I’ve rarely seen him drink and then only water.

I wake up each morning having slept better than I can remember, feeling wonderful, then he walks out on me like I was a hooker at the Gomorrah and the beautiful feeling turns dark around the edges. I go about my errands still with the sweet taste of him in my mouth, hoping against hope that I will see him in the evening, not really expecting to, and thrilled beyond words when he makes his appearance.

It can’t go on. I’m starting to feel mentally ill. This whole thing is so unlike me. I’m not a sucker for manipulative men, I don’t fall for the bad guy; I don’t run foolish risks. I’ve been chaste as a nun since I was shot. I’m too busy for the duties that come with love, not to mention the health problems that can accompany lust. There are no antibiotics in this part of the Wasteland, and disease is rife. So far I’ve found it easiest just to avoid the whole deal - till now. I take anything that man gives me, even the risk of ‘Gomorrhea’ as the locals call it. 

It can’t go on, he must go back to the Fort, and I must further my own missions; but in the meantime, it is divine, and I find myself daydreaming about ways to _make_ it go on. Could I sell out to the Legion? Ugh. No. Would he ever abandon his post with them? Hard to imagine it. Could we somehow keep seeing each other, without either becoming a traitor to our own beliefs?

These dreams are naive because, during daylight hours at least, he doesn’t even like me. He is making a fool of me, costing me my friends and self-respect, and I shouldn’t allow it to be happening now, let alone trying to make plans for a future together.

So here’s my cheek – slap me as hard as you can. I need it. Better yet, get the cattle prod from over in the corner and set it to maximum voltage. I’m serious, I need it, don’t hold back. My brain needs urgent rewiring. I’m in love with a spectre.


	7. Courier’s Journal: voice recording on PIPboy 3000A

=static=  
=heavy breathing=  
Yeah I’m on Highway 95 approaching NoVac. Radioactive dust in my clothes, hair and lungs. The bullet wound in my temple is stinging again.  
=wheezing=  
Those shoes I got from that goddamn Viper yesterday have given me seriously nasty blisters. Wish I hadn’t thrown away my old boots, even if they were falling to pieces. Memo to self, don’t throw anything away until the replacement is tried and tested.  
=racking cough=  
Apart from that, oh yeah, it’s a beautiful day.  
=static=  
=silence=


End file.
